


I Never Googled My Death

by RobbieTurner



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (kinda), Beverly Lives, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, what an odd pairing you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:01:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobbieTurner/pseuds/RobbieTurner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Molly first saw Bev resting her side against a tree. She was carrying back the clean laundry and Willy was at school. A woman with hair made of silk and black ink, and eyes glimmering with cleverness and youth.  She was smiling.</i> </p>
<p>Beverly comes back from the dead to protect Molly Graham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Never Googled My Death

**Author's Note:**

> based on a prompt on tumblr.

She once met a wolf. His fur was grey and he was dying. He looked at Molly with resignation in his dark eyes and then away, like she was already something of a world that didn’t matter. Blood spattered on the snow like a trail of breadcrumbs. She run back to the house and then back to the woods carrying bread and pork with her, and with tiny, careful steps, offered it to that wolf. She did that three times more and then, in the fourth, he was dead. She was seven.

( _But never get too close,_ she thought, _dying creatures can still bite._ )

There were scars in Will Graham’s body, dark and ugly, but she kissed them anyway.  Scars inside too, that she hoped to unravel one day, if Will wanted to. To love is to know, isn’t? They named dogs together and fished and treaded through snow and kissed her son on both cheeks each morning and each night. They made love silently and sometimes laughing, and sometimes letting it show, the burned edges, the piercing brokenness of their past. There were nights when Will’s eyes grew dark like blood in the moonlight, and distant like dead stars. To love is to know. She didn’t know him, not enough.

They lived in the north of the world, up, up, up, whole rivers melting when spring came. Hidden like a witch’s cottage. But Jack found them anyway and took Will away, back to the land of nightmares, back to the still sharp blades of what he had left behind.

He fucked her hard the night before he left. Clinging to her like to the last shred of a boat, here, now, while the waves remained gentle and the sky was clear.

 

 

Molly first saw Bev resting her side against a tree. She was carrying back the clean laundry and Willy was at school. A woman with hair made of silk and black ink, and eyes glimmering with cleverness and youth.  She was smiling.

“Hey!” the woman said, squatting on the ground and petting one of the strays – Nemo “Molly, right? I’m Beverly Katz. Bev. Friend of Will’s. He told you about me?”

Bev. _Bev._ Will _had_ mentioned her, but she couldn’t remember the context. The woman was still smiling.

“Yeah. He’s not here now, though. Are you one of his colleagues from the… are you one of his colleagues?”

Beverly got up and started coming down. Her clothes were too light for that weather. Plaid and jeans and a jacket. How wasn’t she freezing?

She took it out a FBI badge and showed it to Molly.

“Crime scene investigator” she answered “And I’m here for you, actually. Will asked me to keep an eye on you. Help you learn how to defend yourself until the investigation is over.”

Oh. Molly paused at that, the acid unease rising to her throat. She didn’t like to be reminded of that.

“Thank you but I really don’t need--”

“He insisted” Beverly said, seemingly unaffected “You know. The King is out, asked one of his Knights to tend to his Queen.”

 Molly stared at her, and felt a smile creeping on her lips, a senseless flush swelling on her cheeks. 

“So,” Bev provided for her, “Gonna invite me in?”

It’s strange to have Bev around. It’s like she came out of a fairy tale, a _snow child,_ and sometimes Molly half-expects to found her reduced to a puddle of cold water. Or a bird.

She sleeps on the couch and spends most of her days out, coming back with the sunset, wearing a smile that never seems to waver. It’s strange, but not a bad kind. Bev makes her laugh, she plays with Willy and teaches him how to punch and how to kick. They sit by the fire and drink hot cocoa and Bev talks and talks and it’s impossible not to like her. Rose Red and Snow White invited a friendly bear to live with them and later he protected them both from the goblin, isn’t that how the story goes? It rather feels like this. The Bear became a prince later, she recalls, looking at the lines of Bev’s face. She’s beautiful and sharp and vibrant like a melody for violin. Perhaps the bear was a princess, Molly thinks, sleepy.

 

 

There’s a day when they arrange glass bottles like children in a movie or survivors in the midst of the zombie apocalypse and Bev teaches her how to shoot.

“It’s a semi-automatic pistol” Bev explains, showing her a gun. She takes a magazine and loads into it, letting the slide go in a fluid movement with the ease that comes with practice. “It’s easier than it looks but harder than it seems in cop shows” she goes on, letting Molly hold it for a second.  It’s heavier than she expected. She remembers the four rules of safety and hands the gun back to Bev like she’s handling a particularly vicious snake.  

“It’s unnerving. I feel like it’s gonna go off and I’ll lose a toe.”

Bev chuckles.

“The safety is on, see? It’s pretty much harmless.” 

_Not a word I’d use to describe a gun,_ Molly thinks, but she lets Bev guide her hand around the weapon, one of her fingers along the slide. She feels silly, foolish, but Bev is gentle and patient and it feels nice to be touched by her.

“Grip hard but don’t squeeze.” Bev says, her arm a firm line beside Molly’s, her breasts against her back, like Molly is bow and arrow and hers to mould.  She fixes her eyes in one of the broken bottles.

“Look the monster in the eye,” Bev whispers against her ear “and say: not me.”

 

 

With Bev she feels safe. So why are her dreams foul and populated with the worse? A collection of antler blossoming from the head of a beast; when she’s sleeping the wolf howls words she can understand.  They talk of slow deaths, carefully constructed funerals. Molly wakes up panting, too old to cry.

_Look the monster in the eye and say: not me._

Will calls: _I miss you._ Does he? It’s like talking to a ghost, through a line that connects her to another world, beyond the graveyard of his past. For some reason she doesn’t mention Beverly.

(She knows the reason though; she’s just not ready to believe it yet.)

 

 

“So he never told you any details about me.” Bev speaks when they are having dinner one day. She never touches the meat – only eats what is green or made of wheat.  She likes sweet things too: apricot pie is her favourite.

“And neither has you.” Molly answers, nonchalantly. 

“I’m an open book!” Bev says.

“Not true,” interferes Willy. “The only thing I know about you is that you play the violin and help catches bad guys.”

“Isn’t that cool enough for you?” The woman retorts, and pinches his cheek.

“Come on, Bev. Give us something” Molly says “Your star sign.” _How did you die?_

 Beverly smiles.

“Sagittarius.”

“Your favourite colour” _Did Hannibal kill you?_

“Blue.”

“Your favourite movie” _Why are you here?_

“Ah, that’s a difficult one. Princess Bride, I guess. I can quote the whole thing.” She’s looking at Molly. “I love movies about heroes. Can’t believe how young Robin Wright was! And now she’s doing House of Cards… I’d rescue her from an evil king any day.”  _Are you mostly dead too, Beverly?_ “Wouldn’t you?”

Molly takes a moment to answer, the food falling from her fork. She smiles.

“I would, yes. Any day.”

 

 

_“…murdered by the serial killer known as Hannibal the Cannibal, Beverly Katz was thirty-two years old…”_

So this is a world tenanted by the arcane. Not all wolves devour little girls lost in the woods, not all women who eat and talk are alive. Her wrists are crossed bellow Will’s pillow, her head resting on its side, and thinking is warm like a headache.

A quarter of the moon in the sky, his husband out there in the wild hunting monsters he knows by name. Bev is almost weightless in her steps. She stops, body half in, half out the room, like a vampire waiting for the invitation to enter.

Molly looks up.

“So,” Bev crosses her arms.  “Have you figured it out yet?”

She licks her lips.

“Yes. Partially, I mean, google helped.”

Bev sighs.

“Can you believe I never googled my death?”

“Understandable.”  She pats the bed with her hand. “Join me?”

For the first time since they met, Bev seems to have a morsel of shyness, and it blooms pink in her face, de-aging her a whole decade. She goes to Molly, though, pulling the covers and crawling into the bed and faces Molly, laying on her side too, like they are both teenagers sharing a secret.

“How did it happen?”

“Like it always does. A girl strays from the path, goes alone to the lion’s den, thinks she’s gonna come back carrying flowers.”

“I’m sorry.”

She really is. Dying must hurt and Bev is prettier with a smile on her face.

“Are you a ghost?”

“I’m more substantial than that.”

“So are you alive?”

“I’m not really sure. I was dead. And then I wasn’t anymore.”

“Maybe you’re a witch.”

“Maybe. I wish I knew that before. It’s not very nice. Dying.”

She reaches for a string of that black hair, stops. _Can I?_ Bev lets her, and takes a lock of Molly’s blond hair in her hand too.  Does she know the right questions? How sharp are the answers? Even from here she can hear a heartbeat. Even from here she knows Beverly is warm.

How often do you kiss the dead?

“Why are you protecting me, Bev?”

Has she touched the unspeakable with her fingertips? Has the unspeakable touched her _?_

“There are monsters you can’t beat alone.”

 

 

A lot of snow that year, snow like mouthful of diamonds. Burning cold like stars. 

Bev said: "There are three monsters in your future. The first one is coming soon and I can't reveal myself to him."   
  
It's ok, Molly thought, not ready to kill but ready to flee, we'll survive another winter.   
  
(How did Bev know? It didn't matter, the monster came: A handsome, dark stranger coming to steal her eyes and her son's life; to make an offering out of her body. And then she was breathing, hurt but alive, looking up, to the bright hospital lights, and she thought: _I survived the first_. In fairy tales they always come in three. What spell will she break, what frog will become a prince again when she defeats the last one?)   
  
Will came to visit. Angry, more at himself than anything. Not for the right reasons, she'd realise later. _There he is. Slipping away from me_.   
  
(How limited his knowledge. How coated in his own privilege. To be a man in a land of monsters is better than being a woman.)   
  
She and Willy go back to the house, to Beverly, both of them scarred and changed. You don’t go back from being a survivor, not really. From the three herculean tasks she’s got in her hands, this is just the first.

 

 

Bev is humming _everybody wants to be a cat,_ eyes closed, her head resting on the pillow. Molly pulls the covers and joins her. They sleep together every night now. Why not, if they are two warm bodies? So maybe she lays beside a miracle every night. But the question that burns in her throat is another. 

“Bev,” Molly asks, turning to her like they always do before sleep, a ritual of few days.  “How did he kill you?”

 Bev stops humming, opens her eyes and face Molly. Her eyes like lakes of petrol. She’s too beautiful for anyone to hurt and yet, they have.

“Hannibal strangled me.”

It’s like acid pouring down Molly’s throat.

“You know, the worst part wasn’t the lack of oxygen. The worst part was looking at his eyes the whole time. Being hopeless, and witnessed so intimately like that. I had laughed at those eyes and they had laughed back once, so… Well. I’ve seen the work of a lot of psychos. It shouldn’t shock me.” 

She smiles a small smile, shrugging. 

“After that he froze my body and cut it in pieces, made a tableau with it. Kinda offensive to be honest, leaving my body half naked and sliced like a cake there.” She rolls her eyes. “Asshole.”

 

 

Molly laughs, her chest aching with tenderness for that dead girl. “Yeah, he is. Dick.” 

They both share the joke, chuckling like high-schoolers.

“Why didn’t you go after him? The sight of you alone could be enough to give him a heart attack.” 

“True, but that’s not how it works.”

“What do you mean?”

Bev rests her face on her hand.

 “My meddling with you living folk is limited, I guess." 

_But I can touch you, smell you, want you._  

“Do you want me to avenge your death for you?”

Molly says, and she’s only half-kidding. Bev smiles her most beautiful smile yet.

 “You know, that’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you.” 

This is where the song gets softer. They both scattered truths in the midst of playfulness like teenagers do. Like girls who hardly kiss other girls. Bev touches her first, but Molly breaks the distance. Their lips met and Bev is warm and _alive,_ pulsing in her arms. They entwine in that first embrace, hands wandering with certain shyness. Recklessly, lovingly.

 

 

A thousand half-formed words and autumn leaves go by, and Molly knows but asks anyway:

 “Will is not coming back, is he?”

Bev is firm and solid like a wall made of steel. She says:

“Not in the way you want him to.”

 

 

She’s been living in this strange dream since she met Will. Or further back, when she met the wolf. Carrying her own brand of curses, touching this world made of glass with uncertain hands. She misses Will, but the next time they meet he’ll be a shadow and she’ll be a little less forgiving.

 (He knew he’d sleep forever but prickled his finger anyway) 

Beverly leaves marks on her skin, and she bites right back. They practice shooting every afternoon until Molly can shatter each and single one of the bottles. A few of them thrown on the air too, a parade of what moving bodies would be like. Bev teaches Willy how to shoot too, after a while. To guard him from the ugliness of the world, she thinks. What little he’s seen has been enough. He’s older than his years now, and she can’t change that.

The dragon is dead, they all know from the newspapers, but he’s not the first monster and he won’t be the last.

She feels like a war widow with a letter in lieu of a funeral. Missing in action, is that the term? She doesn’t bury Will. Not yet.

 

 

A whole year passes. For Christmas she buys Beverly a violin. There’s yet life to be lived.

They are laying in bed, panting and happy, legs trembling still.

Beverly holds Molly’s face between her hands and kisses her.

 “Molly,” she breathes against her lips “It’s time.”

 

 

They send Willy to stay with his grandmother in Canada. It’s his first trip alone in an airplane and he’s excited, albeit a little nervous.

  _Just in case_ , she thinks.

 These are restless days.  She wishes Bev and herself could hide behind a wolf, behind a bear, behind the certainty of a happy ending. But they can’t. That’s why she can use a gun like a pro now. That’s why the visit she expects has a face she once loved.

( _Let’s see if I can give the devil a heart attack,_ Bev says grinning, one day before, eyes wicked and lovely)

 

 

Molly holds tightly – but not too much – to her pistol. The night is dark and cold and they come hunting in the snow, two men, her husband and _his_ husband, smelling of expensive cologne. Perhaps, between their teeth, she would find pieces of women’s flesh.

Hannibal, the man Will chose, is handsome in a very odd way. He wears a smile and a tailored suit, and looks like the personification of a shark. Molly cocks the gun.

Bev is sitting in a chair when they come in, drinking tea and not facing them.  From her post Molly recognises the look of confusion in Will’s face when he sees black where he expected blond. Bev stands up, turns and they both freeze.

Will’s face is drained of blood. He blinks and waits for Bev to disappear.

“Hey Will.” She says instead, smiling. “It’s been a while.” Then she looks at Hannibal, who seems more fascinated than scared. Her eyes are hard and amused and in that moment Molly knows why she fell in love. “Gotcha.”

It takes a second, the longest: Molly gets out of her hiding place and pulls the trigger.

If Hannibal has a heart, she just pierced.

She looks at Will as the body falls besides him. He’s wounded, fatally so, but still can bite. When he looks at her, she knows. She pulls the trigger a second time.

_Look the monster in the eye and say: not me_

 

 

 


End file.
